Tag: illustration

  • Four Fresh Winds

    Photo by Eva Ekebald via Flickr (Creative Commons)

    There’s nothing quite as invigorating as a deep breath of fresh air. 

    As a kid I was highly allergic to cats. When I visited someone’s home who had cats my eyes would itch immediately. Then the wheezing would begin. The final step was a very labored, forced filling of my lungs, which always resulted in a trip to the emergency room for some time on the oxygen mask and a few shots.

    In most cases I could relieve all of the symptoms of my allergic reaction just by stepping outside. As the fresh air filled my lungs and washed over my eyes I was renewed. The wheezing faded. The itching subsided. Slowly I felt normal again.

    Photo by Laura O'Halloran via Flickr (Creative Commons)

    While I’m no longer allergic to cats I still experience the same renewal when I am in the presence of people who provide me fresh air. When life has me wheezing and my eyes watering from irritation– even 15 minutes with a person who breathes fresh air into my life is life changing– alleviating the symptoms of whatever allergy life delivers.

    I’ve found that there are four types of people who breathe fresh air into others…

    1. The Cold Crisp Reality – When someone splashes water into my face with the reality I need to hear, I’m thankful. I’ve been in leadership long enough to appreciate when people take off the nice filter and tell me what’s really on their mind. Too often, I’m in the position of trainer and not learner. Trust me, the cold crisp reality is far more refreshing than a fistful of niceties.
    2. The Salty Truth – I have some people in my life who love to speak truth with a little salt in the air. Well beyond shock jock quality, their borderline cynicism moves me into deeper and deeper understanding. Here’s the thing about salt. Without salt a lot of life would lack flavor.
    3. The Dry Facts – This is different than a cold crisp reality because it is usually an examination of the data. While not exciting, much of life has data points which I both learn from and find refreshing.
    4. The Calm New Morning Mist – The experience of stepping out of your home into the freshness of a morning is instantly spiritual as my sleep renewed body conjoins with the dew filled renewal of dawn. Likewise, when calm refreshing still-quiet voices speak words of kindness into me my soul is renewed.
    Question: When you’ve gone a long time without fresh air– what are your signs of an allergic reaction?  
    Photo credits: (Creative Commons) Morning Dew – Eva Ekebald; Talk to the Paw! – Laura O’Halloran

  • Hold the reigns tightly

    Photo by MyEyeSees via Flickr (Creative Commons)

    I’ll never forget the first time I rode a horse. 

    Growing up in the city meant that horses just weren’t part of my life. I remember seeing horses as a kid at parades. At the county fair in the horse barns. Or occasionally at big football game when the police brought in horses for crowd control.

    And I wasn’t one of those city slickers who dreamed of the open range wrangling up some cows.

    I was 19 years old the first time I rode a horse. And I rode a horse because I had to for a college class.

    It was an intimidating experience. This animal was 10 times bigger than me. It was taller than me. And it was infinitely stronger than me. Somehow I was supposed to sit on it and “control” it with a tiny piece of leather and some kicks?

    Yeah, right.

    The horse I rode could have cared less that I existed. It was an old camp trail horse who had seen a million riders over a million years and barely even acknowledged my existence. It was one of those horses that you could tell used to be big, strong, and attractive in its youth but now its best description would be, “tired.”

    Before I put my foot in the stirrups I tried to get to know him and pat him on the head. He just took a leak and looked away.

    I wish I could describe the experience as enjoyable. It wasn’t. It was uncomfortable and bumpy and I felt completely stupid on the horse. It didn’t seem to matter what I “told” the horse to do as it just walked the trail. When it got behind it trotted up ahead to catch up with its friends. Whenever it wanted to– it stopped to eat grass. And when it was done with me it used trees and branches to try to knock me off its back.

    To make matter worse everyone else seemed to be having a great time. All I felt like was kicked in the gonads 200 times. I tried to make the best of it but it just wasn’t fun and I couldn’t wait for it to be over.

    Standing in the barn after the trail ride I asked the person who ran the trail rides why I hated it so much. She just kind of laughed. “Probably because you fought the horse the whole time. And probably because you were scared. It would have been fun if you’d just held on tight and relaxed.”

    That’s a lot like my relationship with God

    When it’s unpleasant, when I’m scared, when I’m intimidated, and when I’m trying to be in control… walking with God is like getting kicked in the gonads 200 times.

    Often times God just wants us to hold onto the reigns real tight and relax.

     “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, 
       neither are your ways my ways,” 
                declares the LORD. 
    “As the heavens are higher than the earth, 
       so are my ways higher than your ways 
       and my thoughts than your thoughts. 
    As the rain and the snow 
       come down from heaven, 
    and do not return to it 
       without watering the earth 
    and making it bud and flourish, 
       so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, 
    so is my word that goes out from my mouth: 
       It will not return to me empty, 
    but will accomplish what I desire 
       and achieve the purpose for which I sent it. 

    Isaiah 55:8-11

  • Be Intent

    The last seven weeks I’ve had laser focus on one thing: Be ready for September 1st. 

    Buy office equipment. Set-up a home office. Lease part-time office space. Create financial systems. Set-up a business infrastructure. Write business plans. Write marketing plans. Lay the groundwork to build a customer base. Write proposals. Sign contracts. Get consulting. And a whole lot more stuff like that.

    This has been my life. And I’m exhausted. Last night was another day when I started at 7:00 am and went until 1:00 am with only a few breaks in the middle. It will be like this until Labor Day weekend when I finally get to disconnect and reward myself.

    Here’s an observation I’ve made during this season: When you’re starting something from scratch you have laser-like focus and unlimited energy because you can grasp the big picture all at once. What’s next is what is right now.

    The flipside is: Existing organizations have a unique ability to lose focus at the exact wrong time.

    What’s next takes priority over what’s right now and visa versa. A big project is coming up and right before it happens a key decision-maker goes on vacation. Your biggest sales opportunity of the year? You missed it because you scheduled an internal meeting instead. On and on. Mental errors cost you in an existing business because you can’t see the whole organization anymore.

    It’s like observing an island from a plane before you land, when you’re at 30,000 feet you can see the whole thing. But when you land you can only see what’s in front of you. 

    In life, just like in business, the difference between success and failure in life is razor thin. Watch any sporting championship and you’ll see it. A single mental mistake at the wrong can cost you a championship, or a deal, or whatever your measurable is for success. That same mental mistake a thousand times during the season never hurt you before. But in the wrong moment? You’re dreams are wiped away.

    When those moments come. Be intent. 

  • How we got here is not how we get out of here

    In 1995, I got a job running some machinery on nights and weekends for a large health care company. I was a college student and it was a perfect job for me.

    • It was boring and I could do my homework. 
    • I had free reign to the 29th floor of a Chicago skyscraper until 6:00 AM. 
    • It paid $15.00 per hour, as many hours as I wanted to work.

    The people who trained me were meticulous is telling me “this is how things are done.” In truth, their system took a fairly simple task and made it really complicated. They spent most of their day waiting for something to load onto the computer or setting up the machinery.

    And when I’d point out that if you did things in a different order, the whole process ran a lot faster, I was sharply told, “Don’t mess with the order. This is how we were trained to do it. This is how things are done.”

    And I did. Until they left. And then I did things my own way.

    This went on for months. The day staff would do 10% of the work and in 5-6 hours I’d come in and knock out the other 90% using my own techniques. And the day staff started to hate me. They’d leave me “encouraging notes” all the time about how I was making them look bad.

    One night, about 10 o’clock, the door of my room swung open unexpectedly. I was blasting the Newsboys, reading Hodge’s Systematic Theology, and the machine was running like a champ even though I was barely looking at it. To my horror I had missed that my bosses, bosses, bosses, boss– the VP of the department– had stayed really late to work. As she had heard my music and wanted to say goodbye before she left.

    I stood up suddenly, convinced I was about to be fired for breaking like 6 rules.

    “Adam, I want to ask you some questions!” Crap. Dangit. How did I let this happen?

    It turns out that she had actually left at five and come back just to see me. She explained to me that she heard in a meeting that I was somehow doing more, cheaper, and faster than other employees who had 10 years experience on me. And no one knew why… so she had come to figure it out.

    By the time I was done explaining my process to her she had two questions for me:

    1. Could I teach other people how to do this?
    2. How soon could I start as the supervisor of that area?
    That’s when I learned that “this is how things are done” wasn’t going to work for me as an adult.

    “This is how things are done.“

    As an idea guy, there are rarely more offensive words spoken.

    In my mind, there are lots of ways to do everything and the way that you’ve always done them has lead you to the results that you know. So, if you have the absolute best results/product/organization on the planet, and it can’t possibly get any better than it is, yes… I suppose this is how you do it.

    But for everything else– This is how you do it to get the results you already have. 

    • This is our service order
    • This is our product cycle
    • This is our traditional calendar
    • This is our fundraiser
    • On and on

    “This is how things are done” is fools gold. Because of the law of diminishing returns, “this is how things are done” will only lead you into doing less, earning less, and reaching less– instead of more.

    What’s interesting about being around people who believe in this? They think that it leads to greater efficiency and better results. And when results aren’t what they’d hoped they would be it’s not the system that is broken, it’s that you didn’t do things the right way, in the right order, or with the right people.

    You see, “this is how we do things” works. At least it does for  them. “This is how things are done” is comfortable, predictable, and easy.

    But as a long-term strategy? It only leads to failure. Long term, systemic failure.

    Sadly, because the law of diminishing returns is gradual you don’t even recognize that your systems are, like the frog in the pot, killing you.

    Until one day you wake up and realize:

    • My church is way smaller than it used to be even though we’re working harder.
    • Kids aren’t coming to my retreats anymore even though I’m promoting it like crazy.
    • I’m selling fewer cars than I need to in order to survive and prices have never been better.
    • I’m making far fewer widgets than I need to be in order to make a profit.
    • I can’t make payroll, much less a profit.

    What’s the solution?

    Start some new mantras. “How can we do more with less?”

    Create a culture that rewards soft innovation.

    Ask your frontline workers.

    Reward your frontliners and they’ll keep you on the bleeding edge.

    REVOLT: The systems that got you here will not be the systems that lead you where you want to go.

  • Weeds

    The last couple of weeks have been stressful. Work stuff piled up as an ever growing to-do list was at war with two very firm deadlines. Stress built, tension built, and I was an emotional wreck. One day last week I started working at 6:00 am and largely sat in the same place steadily working until 10:00 pm. And I didn’t feel any closer to being done than I did before.

    I’ve learned that one of the ways I relax is to spend time in our garden. Life can be going a million miles per hour and it all slows when I crouch or kneel next to a bed of vegetables.

    The chores of having a garden are fairly simply and repetitive. Fertilize the soil. Plant things at the right time. Water when its dry. Pull weeds. Harvest. Repeat.

    The back-to-basics simplicity is what brings me so much joy. Fresh, organic fruits and vegetables are merely the by-product of the primary benefit.

    Each weed I pull it releases a little bit of tension. In the past couple of weeks, the warmer weather arriving forced me to water more… which resulted in weeds springing up everywhere. That was perfect! Because I had plenty of tension, frustration, and anxiety to pull out with each weed as well.

    Pulling weeds has a strong tie to my life with Jesus, too.

    Here are a few things I’m reminded of as I weed my garden:

    • You can’t just weed once per week.It’s better to weed a little bit each day.
    • Weeds like fertile soil just as much as crop producing plants. Where there is growth there will be weeds.
    • Sometimes you have to be gentle when you pull out a weed. It’s roots my be intertwined with roots of a good plant.
    • Some weeds have thorns and smell bad. But others are pretty and you’re tempted to keep them. Don’t.
    • Bugs eat your fruits and vegetables. For some reason they leave weeds alone.
    • Even the best gardeners pull weeds. You never get above it… you just get better at it. And some just get better at hiding the evidence.
    • Weeding the garden is work. It’s an easy skill but it is always going to get you dirty and always going to make you sweat.

    What are some other parallels between taking care of your garden and your walk with Christ?

  • Manage Acceleration or Acceleration Manages You


    Back in college I had a job managing a group of machine operators. Part of my job was to make sure that the materials for the equipment were easily available to my team so that they could keep the machines running as much as possible. I taught my team to think of the machine as a cash register. When it stopped running the company stopped making money. With that simple mindset we were extremely efficient.

    Our materials came from various sources around the world, I purchased in bulk through a series of middle men, then stored the materials in our warehouse. In our department, we kept a small quantity and I would order replacement items on a regular basis and a different department would go get what I needed and bring it near our area of the warehouse and we would put stuff away.

    Typically, this was a smooth operation. But sometimes, like on a weekend or over a holiday, I would have to go out into the warehouse and get my own materials.

    Our stuff was densely heavy. So, I would take apart skids of materials on their shelves and put what I needed onto a very heavy hand cart one item at a time. Then I’d push as much as 1 ton of materials and put them away in our room.

    This cart was really cool in it’s simplicity. It had big steel wheels, heavy wood, and a massive steel bar for pushing or pulling.

    You know what was interesting about that cart? I could put thousands of pounds of materials on it, give it a big shove, and then walk along with it along the smooth concrete exerting very little effort. It took way more energy to stop it and start it than it did to just keep it going in a straight line.

    To keep that cart under control you had to find the right speed and apply an even amount of force. If you did that it was fine. If you didn’t apply enough force consistently you ended up working way too hard. But if you got going too fast… you would be out of control and you might not actually be able to stop it.

    I always feared that someone would walk out in front of me and I wouldn’t be able to stop the cart before it hit them. That never happened. But one of my co-workers did hit a very large steel post (buried in concrete) and bent it severely.

    That is physics in action. A giant mass doesn’t need to go very fast to apply a large amount of force against a stationary object.

    It is also a lesson in how momentum works. In order to keep moving with the least amount of effort, you have to apply a steady amount of force.

    I think the cart taught me a lesson way back that is easily applied to stuff I do today.

    Moving a lot of mass involves the right amount of force

    When I reflect on things that are out of control in my life… maybe I’m misapplying force? Maybe I’m going too slow and working to hard as a result? Maybe I’m going too fast and changing directions is just too difficult? And maybe I’m just not patient/disciplined enough to walk at the right pace or applying the right level of direction?

    Accelerate safely

    Too often, I have an attitude that I can do everything at once RIGHT NOW and all the time. And that means that things sometimes get out of control. Sadly, it also means that sometimes people get hurt.

    The role of friction

    The key to the cart working in the warehouse is that there’s very little friction between the steel wheels and the smooth concrete. That’s why its so important to keep the floor of a warehouse clean. Outside of the warehouse, friction is the variable in the equation that is not always under my control. In order to maintain momentum, I need to constantly monitor and deal with sources friction.

  • Shut up and drive

    Church Van
    Photo by Simon Abrams via Flickr (Creative Commons)

    People are showing up and I have a million things running through my mind.

    • Do I have all of my personal stuff?
    • Do I have all of the stuff we need that the church needs to bring?
    • Are all of my leaders here?
    • Did I double check fuel levels? What about oil changes, we good there?
    • Which students still need to turn in permission slips?
    • And those two students I was trying to convince to go at the last minute, are they going to show?
    • Did I print off directions? The other drivers hate it when I forget to do that.
    • Don’t forget the orientation before we leave.
    • Did I print the flyer for parents? If I don’t write down all of the details they will call me the whole time.
    • How will I start a meaningful conversation with someone new on this drive?

    These are the myriad of things rattling through my brain as students show up for an event. I have a tendency to think 2-3 steps ahead of what is presently going on. Early arrivers check-in and I barely even acknowledge them as I’m still lost in the mental checklists of a deeply analytical moment.

    And I’ve learned over the years that since I’m lost in those details it’s better to identify a couple of volunteers who can be fully present when students arrive with their parents. It’s better to allow them to greet trip participants, answer questions, and get their bag put in the right place.

    But there comes a moment in each youth group trip where I have to intentionally shift gears and turns off all of that forward thinking.

    Sometimes you just have to shut up and drive the van.

    That’s how I’m feeling about life right now. There are a myriad of things going on. Too many things to list and some far too personal or private to share. But each day I have to find a moment where I tell myself, “Just shut up and drive.”

    All of that future planning and strategy is great. But if I don’t shut up and drive forward, those plans and strategies will become regrets. And ultimately, intentions, plans, and strategies don’t mean squat. All that matters is results.

    Shut up and drive.

  • Pressing Play on Life

    I woke up thinking about this song. Flashback to the 90s, right?

    In so many ways life has felt like it was on pause since September when I went to LA for convention. I’ve just been consumed by work. It swallowed me.

    And yesterday brought so much release. (Er, if the illustration of “swallowed by work” holds true, I guess that means work vomited or pooped me out? Let’s just not take the illustration there.) When I got home yesterday, I just felt like life could return to normal. I went to Target to Christmas shop. I took a little nap. I took Kristen out to a very nice restaurant and a movie. And this morning… it’s time to grab the leash and take Stoney to the beach.

    Back to life, back to reality…

    I’ll spare you the video of me dancing. But just so you know, I’m dancing.